London's News Press and the Thirty Years War by Jayne E.E. Boys

Author:Jayne E.E. Boys [Boys, Jayne E.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 17th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781843839347
Google: vxIABQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published: 2014-01-15T04:05:43+00:00

Plate 4. Page 142 of The Swedish Intelligencer. The first part (1632) which, as it boasted, was revised and augmented for the third time. It illustrates the level of detail and editor’s extensive comments (intended for English and Scottish readers) in both the text and margin. Crossing the River Lech, in April 1632, was (as noted) one of Gustavus Adolphus’s greatest achievements, allowing him to enter Munich in May.

At the end of the decade Lady Brilliana Harley, writing to her son in Oxford, looked forward to the resumption of regular news publication following the grant of a patent to Butter and Bourne in December 1638.33 She was probably disappointed by the product when it arrived. The next series marked a distinct regressive step. Dutch and German publications were reproduced without any editorial contribution in London that might enhance their appeal. They had little to commend them to popular taste. They were repetitious, giving telegram-like reports of the same news from all directions. A reader might have been fortunate to find one interesting report with eyewitness detail or a story line in a week’s batch of three issues. There was no analysis and no engagement with readers in dialogue. We only know that, after an initial period of good sales that sustained an initially high output, they could not compete with the growing market in short ephemeral pamphlets appearing in London. Readers voted with their pennies and foreign news ceased to be a viable enterprise. As Butter explained, ‘if a number shall be vented weekly, to recompence the charge, we shall continue them; if not, we shall be forced to put a period to the Presse’.34

In the more vociferous decade of the 1640s, there was a transformation in the circumstances for public debate. A multitude of pamphlets brought contemporary domestic as well as foreign issues into print. Wallington and Rous’s reflections showed how the increase in print in 1640–2 at times seemed to readers overwhelming, adding to unease and uncertainty in the heightened climate of ‘anxiety, mistrust and fear’. Meanwhile, those who left no written record, but could read or hear the news by gathering around someone who could read it aloud, were more visibly participating in public discussion. Artisans, apprentices, chapmen and hawkers took politics out of doors into the streets and theatres, and people read and argued over pamphlets while standing in stationers’ shops. (In 1642, one such altercation even came to the attention of the House of Commons.)35 Controversial debate appeared in what McKenzie has called ‘a form of communicative interchange’ that was speech-like in the way it was presented in print and gives us an exceptional view of contemporary opinions and arguments as they emerged. Readers could respond as writers. Peacey has demonstrated the propaganda dimensions of this dialogue, probing the heady mixes of political and commercial motives behind publications. He argued that there was a growing sophistication in ‘news management’ by the proponents of both parliamentary and royalist views. There was also a greater awareness of the tactics the press employed as the decade progressed.

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